Happy Wednesday — it’s the final book release day of the iOS 10 Feast, and we’re thrilled to tell you that the our new book Unity Games by Tutorials is now 100% complete and is available today!

To celebrate, we’re giving away ten free PDF copies of the book, along with some sweet Unity and raywenderlich.com swag. Also, there’s only a few hours left for the book discount, so if you’re interested in the book, now’s the best time.

Read on for all the details, including how to enter the giveaway!

What’s Inside Unity Games by Tutorials?

The best way to understand the book is to check out the official trailer:

We think the games look pretty awesome, how about you? :]

Unity Games by Tutorials has 24 chapters and 613 pages that show you how to build four complete games from scratch in Unity. By the time you are done reading this book, you will know everything you need to create your own professional cross-platform games.

We’ve also included bonus sections on C# development, creating and animating models in Blender, adding virtual reality support for the Rift and Vive, and more!

Here’s the complete list of what’s in the book:

Section I: Hello, Unity!

This section covers everything you need to know to get started with Unity. You’ll learn your way around the UI, how to work with game assets and physics, and create a 3D twin-stick combat game: Bobblehead Wars.

Here’s what you’ll cover while saving the world from creepy-crawly aliens:

Chapter 1, Hello Unity: Learn how the Unity interface works and how to import assets into your project.

Chapter 2, GameObjects: Learn about GameObjects and Prefabs by adding and laying out the initial objects for Bobblehead Wars.

Chapter 3, Components: Learn how to use components to give your hero the ability to walk and blast away at the oncoming horde.

Chapter 4, Physics: Learn the basics of game physics by adding collision detection and giving the hero the ability to turn on a dime.

Chapter 5, GameManager and Pathfinding: Learn how to create the tools that spawn the aliens, and then make them chase after the hero.

Chapter 6, Animations: Learn how to add animations to the marine and the aliens. It’s time for some shooting and chomping!

Chapter 7, Sounds: Learn how to bring your game to life by adding background music and a variety of sound effects.

Chapter 8, Finishing Touches: Learn how to add a winning and losing condition, and wrap up the game with some classy touches.

Section II: First-Person Games

Now that you’re up to speed with Unity game development, you can move on to more complex game development topics, such as adding in-game UI elements, advanced camera techniques and using multiple weapons.

Chapter 13, More Unity 2D: Learn how to work with 2D physics, how to build levels with sprites and colliders, and how to work with raycasting, animation controllers, and more.

Chapter 14, Saving Data: Learn some great ways to store and retrieve player data for your games.

Section IV: Blender

In this section, you’ll learn how to use Blender — a free 3D modeling and animation tool — to create great-looking assets for your games.

Along the way, you will create a scorpion enemy from scratch, including modeling, texturing, and animating:

Chapter 15, Modeling with Blender: Learn the basics of Blender models as you create a 3D model completely from scratch.

Chapter 16, Texturing with Blender: Learn how to apply 2D textures and colors to your model, manage lighting and materials, and export your model to use in your game.

Chapter 17, Animating with Blender: Bring your models to life with realistic animation and effects.

Section V: Tower Defense

Combining strategy and action results in compelling games that are easy to pick up — and hard to put down.

In this section, you’ll create a 3D tower defense game — Runestrife — with such beautifully-rendered enemies it almost seems a shame to shoot them:

When you’re not busy defending your towers from advancing waves of enemies, here’s what you’ll learn:

Chapter 18, Making a Tower Defense Game: Learn how to build a title screen, create a map using 3D tiles, make enemies move around on a path, and make your life easier with utility scripts.

Chapter 19, Waves of Enemies: Learn how to create multiple waves of advancing enemies, make your towers shoot projectiles, add winning and losing game states, and craft a UI to bind everything together.

Chapter 20, Virtual Reality: Learn how to bring your game into the 21st century and make your game VR-compatible with the virtual reality hardware now available.

Chapter 21, Publishing your Game: Learn how to prepare your game for publication and how to make it available on the various online game portals.

Section VI: Appendices

New to programming in C#? Need a quick overview of the Unity API or the best code editor to use for your project? This section has you covered.

Chapter 22, C# Crash Course: If you already know a programming language, this chapter will get you quickly up to speed with the most important features of C#.

Chapter 23, Unity API: Learn about the various subsystems and major concepts of the Unity API to give you a deeper understanding of how Unity works.

Chapter 24, Code Editors: One thing to love about Unity is that you can use any code editor you like. Learn how to use two popular editors with Unity: MonoDevelop and Visual Studio.

About the Authors

Of course, this book would be nothing without our great team of passionate gamers and developers:

Mike Berg is a full-time game artist who is fortunate enough to work with many indie game developers from all over the world. When he’s not manipulating pixel colors, he loves to eat good food, spend time with his family, play games and be happy. You can check out his work at www.weheartgames.com.

Sean Duffy is a software engineer by day, and hobbyist game and tools developer by night. He loves working with Unity, and is also a Unity Asset Store developer with a special focus on 2D tools to help other game developers. Some of Sean’s more popular Unity Assets include his 2D Shooter Bullet and Weapon System and 2D Homing Missiles assets. You can find Sean on Twitter at @shogan85.

Brian Moakley leads the Unity team at raywenderlich.com and also produces video tutorials on iOS, Unity, and various other topics. When not writing or coding, Brian enjoys story driven first person shooters, reading genre fiction, and epic board game sessions with friends.

Eric Van de Kerckhove is a belgian hobbyist game dev and has been so for more than 10 years. He started with DarkBasic, RPG Maker, Game Maker & XNA and now he makes games using Unity. Eric also takes interest in 3D modelling, vector art and playing video games.

Anthony Uccello is a hardcore gamer and has been playing games since the Atari. The only thing he loves more than playing games is making them with Unity. He has contributed to 2 published video games on both iOS and Android. Anthony is a Senior Consultant at Infusion and is working on his own dungeon-crawling-tactical-RPG video game during his off hours. AnthonyUccello.com

What is Unity?

Unity is a a professional game engine used to create games like City Skylines, Hearthstone, the Long Dark, and more.

Unity’s aim is to “democratize” game development, by providing a AAA-level engine to independent game developers in a way that is both affordable and accessible.

Here are our top 5 reasons why Unity is great:

It’s free to use. If you’re an indie game developer, you can download and start using Unity for free, which is great when you’re just learning.

It’s cross-platform. With Unity, you make your game once and you can build it for a variety of platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and more.

It has a visual editor. Unlike other game platforms where you have to type tons of code before you see anything on the screen, with Unity you can simply import an asset and drag and drop. This visual style of development is great for beginners and professionals alike, and makes game development fast and fun.

Live debugging. With Unity you can click a button to preview your game instantly in the editor, and you can even modify game objects on the fly. For example, you can drag new enemies onto the level as you play it, tweak gameplay values and more, allowing for an iterative game design process.

Unity is fun! You can think of Unity like a box of legos: the only limits are those of your own imagination.

Unity vs. Sprite Kit and Scene Kit: You might wonder which you should use: Unity, or one of the Apple game frameworks like Sprite Kit or Scene Kit.

Here’s our recommendation:

If you are an experienced iOS developer making a simple game and want to target iOS devices only, you may want to consider using one of Apple’s game frameworks. They are very easy to learn and leverage much of your existing iOS development experience.

If you want to target non-iOS devices, or if you want to make games at a professional level, you may want to consider using Unity. Unity is much more powerful than the Apple game frameworks, and does not lock you into the iOS ecosystem, and that’s well worth the increased learning curve.

Unity Games by Tutorials Giveaway

To celebrate the launch of this massive book, we’re giving away ten free PDF copies of Unity Games by Tutorials, along with some sweet Unity and raywenderlich.com swag:

Each winner will receive a free PDF copy of Unity Games by Tutorials, a great-looking Unity hat and a raywenderlich.com magnet set.

To enter into the giveaway, simply leave a comment on this post answering the following question:

What game would you love to build in Unity?

We’ll announce the lucky winners on Friday in a special post on the site. Good luck to everyone!

Note: International giveaway winners will receive the PDF copy of Unity Games by Tutorials only. You must have a U.S. shipping address to receive the hat and magnet set.

Where to Go From Here?

Unity Games by Tutorials is currently available for a $10 off discount. And even better – you can also get an additional 10% off on this book — or anything else in our store — with the code IOS10FEAST.

The $10 off discount expires on Friday, so be sure to snag it while you still can!

Here’s how to get your hands on this book:

If you are an existing PDF customer of Unity Games by Tutorials, download it now on your My Loot page.